The Main Event

  • September 6, 1964 – The Giants’ Juan Marichal strikes out 13 Phillies, including seven in a row, beating Philadelphia 4-3 as the Phillies’ 5.5-game lead begins to slip away in what would become their infamous September collapse.

On September 6, 1964, Juan Marichal walked off the mound at Connie Mack Stadium having thrown a complete-game gem, striking out 13 Phillies — seven of them in a row — in a 4-3 San Francisco Giants win. On paper it was just another late summer loss for a Philadelphia Phillies team that still held first place in the National League by 5.5 games. In hindsight, it sits at an odd hinge point in one of baseball’s most infamous seasons. The game itself was no sign of what was to come, but it would be the first game of a stretch in which the injuries, pitching strain, and sloppy defense that would help sink the “Phold of ’64” all began to surface within days of each other.

A Phillies Team Built for October

Entering that Sunday afternoon, the Phillies looked like a team of destiny. They had opened the season 8-2, held first place from the first week on, and at times led the National League by as many as nine or ten games. Manager Gene Mauch‘s roster was built around a career year from right fielder Johnny Callison, the National League’s early MVP favorite, and a spectacular rookie season from third baseman Dick Allen, who was running away with the Rookie of the Year race. The previous winter’s trade for veteran right-hander Jim Bunning had transformed the rotation — Bunning threw a perfect game against the Mets in June and had won 16 games by early September — while taking the pressure off Chris Short, who blossomed into a reliable number-two starter. Philadelphia had just taken two straight from the Giants, including a 9-3 win the day before behind Bunning’s 16th victory, and improved to 82-53 with a comfortable cushion atop the National League.

Marichal’s Mastery at Connie Mack Stadium

Short started the getaway-day finale for Philadelphia and ran into trouble immediately. After a scoreless first two innings, the Giants broke through in the third with a Del Crandall triple, a two-run homer from Harvey Kuenn, and a Hal Lanier triple, chasing Short after just 2.1 innings. Reliever Bobby Locke settled things down but allowed a solo homer to Orlando Cepeda in the fourth, putting San Francisco up 3-1. The Phillies clawed back in the sixth when Callison hit a solo homer off Marichal, Allen drew a walk, and Wes Covington doubled him home to tie the game at 3-3.

Marichal, though, was in vintage form. After Ruben Amaro’s third-inning single, he retired 13 of the final 14 Phillies he faced, striking out seven consecutive batters spanning the third through fifth innings – Tony Taylor, Callison, Allen, Covington, Tony González, Frank Thomas, and Gus Triandos – all went down swinging or looking in succession. He finished with 13 strikeouts and just one walk over nine innings, even while surrendering solo home runs to González and Callison. It remains one of the most dominant single-game strikeout performances by an opposing pitcher against that Phillies club all season.

The decisive run scored in the eighth inning in almost comic fashion. With the game tied 3-3, Jack Baldschun — normally Philadelphia’s closer, pressed into long relief — walked Willie Mays, picked him off first base, and then watched Mays reach second and eventually score thanks to two separate Phillies errors on the same sequence. It was an unearned run, but it beat them. The Phillies finished the game with six errors as a team, charged to Frank Thomas (two), Amaro, Baldschun, Allen, and Triandos; a strikingly sloppy afternoon in the field for a club that had played crisp, disciplined baseball for most of the season.

Cracks Beneath the Surface

That defensive mess turned out to be more than a bad day. The very next afternoon, September 7, newly acquired bench bat Frank Thomas broke his right thumb sliding into second base against Dodgers shortstop Maury Wills, knocking a key September addition out of the lineup for weeks. Around the same time, number-four starter Ray Culp began nursing elbow trouble, Dennis Bennett was pitching through a sore arm, and Art Mahaffey suddenly lost his control, getting yanked in the first inning of his next start and the third inning of the one after that. In the five games immediately following the Marichal loss, Philadelphia went just 1-4, an uncharacteristic stumble for a team that had dominated the league for five months.

None of this cost the Phillies the pennant by itself — they righted the ship enough to still hold a 6.5-game lead with 12 games to play on September 20. But the underlying cracks never fully healed. With his rotation thinning, Mauch increasingly turned to Bunning and Short on short rest. The warning signs that first appeared in the days after the Marichal game — tired arms, banged-up regulars, shaky defense — never really went away.

Hindsight and Legacy

Viewed on its own, the September 6 loss to Marichal was simply a great pitcher beating a great team on a given day — the kind of result that happens dozens of times over a long season. But sitting where it does on the calendar, right before the first injuries and control problems of the stretch drive surfaced, it has become a small, often-overlooked marker of the moment things started to wobble for the 1964 Phillies, three weeks before the wobble became a full collapse.

Philadelphia Baseball Events for September 6

  • September 6, 1913 – Athletics second baseman Eddie Collins steals home twice in a 9-2 win over Boston, tying the major-league record.
  • September 6, 1916 – The Red Sox beat the last-place A’s, 5-2, for Philadelphia’s 100th loss of a historically bad season.
  • September 6, 1922 – Second baseman Frank Parkinson turns 11 assists for the third straight game as the Phillies beat Brooklyn, 6-4.
  • September 6, 1930 – Mickey Cochrane‘s two-run homer in the bottom of the 10th caps a complete-game effort from Lefty Grove, lifting the A’s past Boston, 3-1, during Philadelphia’s second straight championship season.
  • September 6, 1952 – Robin Roberts wins his 23rd game of the season, defeating the Braves 7-6 at Shibe Park, pitching all 17 innings of the game to do it. Del Ennis‘ walk-off homer in the 17th is the winning hit.
  • September 6, 1989 – Phillies receive Jeff Gray from Cincinnati to complete the July 13 trade for Bob Sebra.
  • September 6, 1989 – The last-place Phillies beat the first-place Cubs, 9-1, as Bruce Ruffin outduels Greg Maddux.
  • September 6, 1993 – The first-place Phillies, in the middle of their surprise pennant run, fall to the Cubs, 7-6, as Chicago’s Ryne Sandberg has his 17-game hitting streak snapped.
  • September 6, 2011 – The Phillies beat Atlanta 6-3 behind starter Vance Worley, the 14th straight game he’s started that the team has won, leaving him one short of the club record set by Steve Carlton in 1972.
  • September 6, 2017 – Phillies trade Juan Nicasio to St. Louis for Eliezer Alvarez.
  • September 6, 2021 – Zack Wheeler strikes out nine over six shutout innings as the Phillies rout Milwaukee, 12-0, pulling within one game of the NL East lead.
  • September 6, 2024 – Trea Turner and Kyle Schwarber both homer as the Phillies pound Miami, 16-2, their most runs scored in a game all season.

ICYMI

Philadelphia Baseball Birthdays for September 6

  • Tommy Thevenow (born 1903) – A slick-fielding, light-hitting shortstop, Thevenow spent two seasons with the Phillies (1929-1930) after being acquired from St. Louis, posting his best offensive season in 1930 with a .286 average and 78 RBI.
  • Vince DiMaggio (born 1912) – The oldest of the three DiMaggio brothers to reach the majors, the center fielder played parts of two seasons with the Phillies (1945-1946) during a 10-year big league career that included two All-Star selections with Pittsburgh.
  • Michael Kelly (born 1992) – A right-handed pitcher, Kelly made his major-league debut with the Phillies in 2022 after being a first-round pick of the San Diego Padres in 2011.

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